Thursday, October 11, 2012

Did Jane Austen Meet Darcy's Test of Female Accomplishment?

I was
just rereading the following immortal passage in P&P for the umpteenth
time, when a novel (ha ha) question occurred to me, which I have used as my
Subject Line:

[Bingley]
"Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and net
purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never
heard a young lady spoken of for the first time,

without
being informed that she was very accomplished."

"Your
list of the common extent of accomplishments," said Darcy, "has too much
truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by
netting a purse or covering a screen. But I am very far from agreeing with you
in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than
half-a-dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really
accomplished."

"Nor
I, I am sure," said Miss Bingley.

"Then,"
observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an
accomplished woman."

"Yes,
I do comprehend a great deal in it."

"Oh!
certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really esteemed
accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman
must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the
modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a
certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her
address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved."

"All
this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add
something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive
reading."

"I
am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather
wonder now at your knowing any."

"Are
you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility of all this?"

"I
never saw such a woman. I never saw such capacity, and taste, and application,
and elegance, as you describe united."

Mrs.
Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice of her implied
doubt, and were both protesting that they knew many women who answered this
description, when Mr. Hurst called them to order, with bitter complaints of
their inattention to what was going forward. As all conversation was thereby at
an end, Elizabeth soon afterwards left the room.

It's
my sense that the above passage is, when viewed from a proper metafictional
perspective, Jane Austen's very sophisticated authorial version of a (very)
indirect boast, because I believe she morethan amply met Darcy's test of female accomplishment, and--here's where
the boast comes into it---she KNEW she met the test, and then some.

Elizabeth
Bennet, young poorly educated and fairly unsophisticated country girl that she
was, was being honest in acknowledging that she never sawsuch capacity, taste, application, and
elegance combined in one woman---but Jane Austen, long before she published
P&P at age 38, had attained thatextraordinary unity. And who knows, maybe Lizzy isJane's selfportrait, reflecting back on her own self seventeen years earlier??

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A lovely bit of praise from my youngest (at heart) supporter in Seattle:

"...Two sessions were outstanding: Juliet McMasters on the more subtle, deeper meanings of "Northanger Abbey" and a Darcy-like young lawyer, Arnie Perlstein, who revealed his very plausible theory that the "shadow story" behind much of Jane Austen's work is the horror of multiple childbirth and women's deaths. I am a Jane-Austen-as-feminist person and this really resonated with me!"

Thank you, Mary!

"Arnie's theories [about Austen and Shakespeare] may strain credulity, but so much the greater his triumph if they turn out to have persuasive force after they are properly presented and maturely considered. That is what publication is all about"

"When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world—the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them."--Tristram Shandy

About Me

I'm a 63 year old independent scholar (still) working on a book project about the SHADOW STORIES of Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays). I first read Austen in 1995, an American male real estate lawyer, i.e., a Janeite outsider. I therefore never "learned" that there was no secret subtext in her novels. All I did was to closely read and reread her novels, while participating in stimulating online group readings. Then, in 2002, I whimsically wondered whether Willoughby stalked Marianne Dashwood and staged their “accidental” meeting. I retraced his steps, followed the textual “bread crumbs”, and verified my hunch. I've since made numerous similar discoveries about offstage scheming by various characters. In hindsight, it was my luck not only to be a lawyer, but also a lifelong solver of NY Times and other difficult American crossword puzzles. These both trained me to spot complex patterns based on fragmentary data, to interpret cryptic clues of all kinds, and, above all, not to give up until I’ve completed the puzzle--and literary sleuthing Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays) is, bar none, the best puzzle solving in the world!